This invention relates to medication use and, more particularly, to a device for facilitating patient compliance with a prescribed regimen of medication.
The importance of adhering to a prescribed regimen of medication use has been well documented. Not only is it frequently necessary that pharmaceutical preparations be taken in a certain sequence in order to assure their effectiveness but, also, the failure to adhere to timing, such as, for example, by taking the prescribed medication too seldom or often may result in serious adverse effects. Yet, studies have shown that about twenty percent of the medication dosages prescribed by physicians are inadvertently not taken by the patient. The problem is particulaly acute among those who are the greatest users of drugs and other medicines, the elderly and infirm and the chronically ill. Such patients are frequently required to take a plurality of drugs in a specified frequency and sequence. However, often such patients have difficulty recalling the time at which a previous dose of medicine was taken or whether it had been taken at all.
There have been prior art attempts at assuring patient compliance to a drug therapy regimen. Some of these attempts have been directed at the provision of dispensing containers in which each individual dosage unit is provided in a separate compartment with each of the compartments identifiable to a particular date, time of day and/or numerical sequence through appropriate indicia. Examples of such containers are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,038,937; 4,158,411 and 4,295,567.
Other approaches to the problem have relied upon the use of calendar indicators and timers which can be set and are provied together with individualized compartments for the dosage unit of the medication to be taken. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,911,856 discloses a dispenser and schedule reminder in which individual compartments are filled with medicinal tablets and marked with indicia such as certain hours of the day. At the prescribed time, the user rotates the cap to uncover the desired compartment for access to the medication. A date selector as well as a timer which can be set for the period to provide an indication as to the next time to use the medication is included in the dispenser.
Yet other approaches rely upon the use of electronic circuitry. U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,757 discloses a pharmaceutical container having a patient compliance monitor. The container includes two compartments, one for the medication and the other for the recording circuitry. The electronic circuitry is activated upon removal of the cap and when the container is inverted as a result of which data is stored in an addressable memory. The memory is subsequently read by a clinician by removing a portion of the container to obtain access to a multi-pin jack for connection to an external clock pulse. The patent states that the device contains "relatively expensive circuit elements".
U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,801 discloses an automatic periodic drug dispensing system which includes a multi-compartment container each compartment of which is color coded with colors corresponding to those appearing as dots on the face of a watch to indicate when the medication contained in the compartment should be taken. Another embodiment involves a timer integral with the container which signals when the medication should be taken and switching means which must be activated by the user to eliminate the signal and open the compartment for access to the medication. Yet another embodiment relies upon a paging signal broadcast by UHF radio by the supplier of the device and received by crystals in the device according to the regimen prescribed for the particular user of the device.
Although the prior art attempts have been many and varied, each of them possesses disadvantages. For example, those dispensing containers which rely on identifiable compartments merely indicate when a medication is taken but do not indicate whether or not the last medication taken was taken on time. In addition, such devices, particularly where incorporating timing and other means, are bulky and inconvenient. The devices shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,801 are mechanically and electronically complex as well as impractical and likely difficult to use by the elderly and infirm. The dispenser disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,757 is merely for subsequent monitoring by a clinician and does not serve the purpose of reminding the patient of a drug therapy regimen. Thus, there remains a need for an effective device to assure patient compliance with a prescribed regimen of medication. Such a device is desirably uncomplicated and easy to use as well as economical to manufacture in order to promote commercial availability and widespread use in order to genuinely achive the intended purpose of making medication therapy more effective, particularly for the elderly and chronically ill.